Having not RTFA, and not knowing if this topic is addressed... I'm fairly confident that I do own my PS3; there's a reason that modding it would get me banned from PSN and void my warranty, but not get me sued. It wouldn't be illegal for me to run my own firmware/OS on the thing, if I found a way to do so.

Honestly, I've never really got the impression that Sony was particularly committed to the OtherOS functionality; given that it already wasn't available on the new PS3 slims, nobody should be surprised by this move. And this is far from the first time that Sony's flat-out lied in a press release. Not that I'm excusing them, mind, it's just that it's not surprising at all.